Responses about Gnome 3.6

Congratulations to the GNOME team for their continued excellent work in building a comprehensive and powerful Free Software desktop!

Jono Bacon, Canonical

I’m always excited to see the latest Gnome releases. I use Gnome software like Nautilus, Shotwell and Rhythmbox because they’re the best at what they do!

I haven’t used Gnome shell yet, but your message has piqued my interest. I’m going to give it a spin right away.

Dick MacInnis, DreamLinux

I have followed GNOME development since the early days when it still basically consisted of a panel and a terminal. I later contributed to the lack of VoIP application for the GNOME Desktop by bringing GnomeMeeting, the first application of its kind.

The GNOME 3.0 release has been the most exciting release so far because the main developers dared bringing a new and innovative vision of what the desktop could be. I see the 3.6 release as the one where the most disturbing parts of this change have been improved for a better user experience. I would like to thank the core GNOME developers for their impressive work : GNOME 3 is better than ever!”

Damien Sandras, Ekiga

We made GNOME for your freedom.

In 1997, the Free World faced a threat in the area of graphical interfaces. KDE existed, and was free (freedom-respecting) software, but it depended on the non-free library Qt. It was impossible to use KDE in the Free World; worse, the desire for a graphical interface lured people to install Qt though they ceded their freedom by doing so.

The GNU Project launched GNOME to cure this problem. Just as the GNU operating system exists so people can have an operating system that respects their freedom, GNOME exists so people can have a graphical interface that respects their freedom.

Nowadays Qt is free software, and GNOME and KDE are friendly competitors. However, this did not happen by accident. It happened because the free software community started GNOME instead of accepting things as they were.

Every time you use GNOME, remember that we made it for your freedom. And remember that the battle for freedom is never finished.

Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation

GNOME forms a foundation for the Free Software business desktop. It’s great to see the improvements in 3.6 that will make business users more productive. Further improving notifications so that IM interactions are not missed is important. I love the improved gtk+2 themes that help make the applications people spend much of their time in to look more integrated. Finally the additional polish, bug fixing and attention to detail is really important to users.

Michael Meeks, Libre Office

I’m really impressed by the road GNOME has embarked upon with the new Shell and everything around it. The idea to build up a cohesive whole (GNOME OS, GNOME SDK) with a clear design vision (GNOME Shell) is of course brilliant – but the big deal is that GNOME executes on it.

The 3.6 release shows this: again, many issues people found in the previous releases have been solved, refining and improving the user experience of GNOME Shell. It proves that the basic design is sound. Problems can, have and will continue to be fixed within the boundaries GNOME has set for themselves in terms of usability.

Jos Poortvliet, OpenSUSE

Gnome is great, and has always been my preferred desktop environment on Linux! During the development of OpenShot, Gnome has done a great job staying out of my way until I need it. I am especially impressed with some of the innovative ideas found in Gnome 3, and look forward to the evolution of the Linux desktop.